Bad Plot Handcuffs 'Family Honor' Cast

September 17, 1985|By Noel Holston, Sentinel Television Critic

Take Mario Puzo's mafioso epic The Godfather and Dorothy Uhnak's Law and Order, a multi-generational novel about a family of Irish-American cops, lash them together with strands from the plot of Romeo and Juliet, and what do you get?

You get a sprawling, intriguing, but ultimately unbelievable dramatic serial that Lorimar Productions calls Our Family Honor.

Our Family Honor's two-hour opener, which ABC will show tonight at 9, is as handsomely produced as any series on TV. The exteriors, shot on location in New York last winter, are so vivid that you can almost smell the street-corner vendors' roasted chestnuts, and the interiors have the dark, moody quality that marked Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies.

There also is a capable cast, headed by character actors Eli Wallach and Kenneth McMillan as the patriarchs of rival dynasties, one involved in organized crime, the other in law enforcement. The serial's potentially fatal flaw is in the linking of the two families.

The serial's potentially fatal flaw is in the linking of the two families. Rare is the dramatic production that doesn't require some suspension of disbelief. Our Family Honor insists that you accept the idea that its two families are obsessively aware of each other, antagonists ever vigilant. Fine. But if you accept that larger family relationship, then the idea that the cop's granddaughter and the gangster's son are live-in lovers, unbeknownst to either family, becomes ludicrous.

Well, perhaps not if your frame of reference is Dynasty, where long-lost children and left-field developments are weekly occurrences. But absurd if you're on the Hill Street Blues wavelength.

Like all serials, Our Family Honor is initially confusing. All those unfamiliar faces coming at you -- it's like a party where you only know the hosts. It may make sorting it out easier if you know going in that:

-- Patrick McKay (McMillan) is about to be named police commissioner of New York, a promotion opposed by mobster Vincent Danzig (Wallach), who grew up with McKay and knows just how obstinately honest he is.

-- Danzig's oldest son, Augie (Michael Madsen), charged with arranging a bribery scandal to embarrass the McKays, goes too far. The resulting murder of a police officer with close ties to the McKays sets oldest son Frank (Tom Mason), a hot-tempered detective sergeant, on a rampage.

-- Granddaughter Liz McKay (Daphne Ashbrook), a rookie cop, is sharing an apartment with a young banker, Jerry Cole (Michael Woods), who is really a Danzig trying to escape his family legacy and beginning to realize what a tricky predicament he's gotten himself into.

No reflection on the actors, and certainly not to wish unemployment on anyone, but Our Family Honor would have a much better chance of taking off if the Danzigs were occasional or peripheral characters. It would take the strain off the show's credibility, and there appear to be more than enough tensions within the McKay family to keep the stories hot.

As it is, this is a great-looking, nicely acted show whose realistic feel calls attention to the incredibility of its plotting.

Local circuit: Reconstructive surgery is the focus of The Body Rebuilt, a WCPX-Channel 6 special tonight (8-10) with Charna Davis and Glenn Rinker as hosts. In addition to pretaped segments on some of the miraculous surgical techniques available in Central Florida, the call-in show will feature a live operation from Florida Hospital.